The goal is to show a variety of body types in order to create empathy for all bodies, improving self-esteem, health, and relationships with ourselves and others.

However, there is a popular trend in this movement in which I don’t plan to participate: Nudity! Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s important to see a variety of body sizes, shapes, colors, abilities, etc… I just don’t feel the need to strip down and show everybody what I got in order to get my point across. For me, that feels like we’re just giving the (heterosexual) male gaze what it wants.

The Militant Baker got together for a photo shoot (NSFW) with 70 women who dared to bare it all. About-Face got a group of positive body image advocates to stand on the sidewalk in their underwear outside a Victoria’s Secret to call for more body diversity in advertising. And, of course, there’s Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, showing “real women” in matching underwear.

I am not saying these campaigns are bad and should go away. I think these are bold campaigns that are playing an important role in the body image movement. However, we need to create a space where people can be proud of their bodies and not have to have their pictures taken in their birthday suits to do so.

I want people to focus on what I have to say and the good deeds I do instead of focusing on what I have going on under my clothes. My body is beautiful and valuable without the world taking a peek and rating me on a scale of 1-10.

When you Google “body image,” you find everyone either nude or in their underwear.

Because, let’s be honest, we all size each other up. We haven’t completely solved that problem yet. That is one of my goals though, and I think it is safe to say it is also one of the goals of the body image movement. That is, to get beyond a place where we value each other based on our bodies, and instead focus on our character and how we treat one another.

I’m proud of my body the way it is, and I love what I can do with it. I’m a curvy woman with stretch marks from two pregnancies and probably some cellulite in places I can’t see. I’m not ashamed of it in any way.

I just don’t want to grant an all-access pass to every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the internet. I’m not a prude, I just enjoy my privacy. There’s only one person who gets to see all my goodies, and his name is husband.

If people want to put themselves out there in that way, more power to them. No judgment. Do you, boo. No one is forcing these women to get naked for the cause. I think all bodies are beautiful and worthy of being seen.

I just don’t want women to feel that the only way to prove it is to get naked in images easily accessed and abused on the web. Me baring it all to promote the idea that all bodies are beautiful may prove that point to other body image advocates and me, but trolls on the interwebs will probably just think “BOOBS”!

What do you think? Would you bare it all to prove you love your body, or are you looking for other ways to spread the body love message?

Gretchen Edwards-Bodmer is a curvy grrrl from Virginia with a Master’s degree in Humanities and Women’s Studies. You can find her musings about raising two boys in this crazy world at www.Grrrlwithboys.com and follow her on Twitter @GrrrlWithBoys.

]]>http://www.about-face.org/why-i-wont-be-getting-naked-for-the-body-image-cause/feed/2Why my potato chips are healthier than the diet mentalityhttp://www.about-face.org/why-my-potato-chips-are-healthier-than-the-diet-mentality/
http://www.about-face.org/why-my-potato-chips-are-healthier-than-the-diet-mentality/#commentsFri, 20 Feb 2015 16:00:36 +0000http://www.about-face.org/?p=17966Saturday afternoon: another Netflix marathon, full relaxation mode… Until the TV screen is taken over by a pile of steaming, fluffy French toast, seductively dripping with sticky, golden maple syrup.

“Yum,” I think.

All of a sudden, the breakfast of dreams is destroyed as a towering box of Special K lands smack on top of the plate, rescuing viewers from entertaining our thoughts of having such a “sinful” food as French toast for our next breakfast.

Then, a female narrator’s voice assures us that, with Special K’s help, our “temptations are toast.”

Special K’s “temptation is toast” campaign.

By the end of this commercial, French toast has become the enemy, and the array of food choices available to women has become a dangerous battlefield on which we’re forced to fend for ourselves: One wrong bite and we’ve stepped on a landmine.

How are we supposed to decipher which foods are the good guys and which ones are the bad as we’re exposed to an ever-changing barrage of mixed media messages, which all put one food in the spotlight as either the cause of all our maladies or the cure to all our woes?

Ads like these instill fear in us, which makes us feel the need to crush cravings without any scientific basis for why we should do so.

Because of this, America has developed orthorexia, as well-intentioned young women have succumbed to a phobia of eating anything that isn’t “pure” or “good.” We’ve stopped asking about why we should follow any dietary advice, and we’ve been brainwashed to think that something is definitely wrong with our bodies’ shapes and sizes. Our acceptance of all these preposterous health claims continues to fuel the media; thus, the negative ads continue.

Regarding the Special K ad, which portrays “tempting” food as being our opponent — I have to ask: When did cravings get such a bad reputation in the first place? Try to answer that question without blabbing off the lists of how you can beat cravings that you’ve read in the bogus “health” articles that litter most women’s magazines.

Dieting has become a way of life in our society. We almost inherently associate cravings as being something problematic, as what we crave probably doesn’t align with whatever diet we’re trying to follow.

The Intuitive Eating Method is a healthy way to combat media’s negativity surrounding hunger and cravings.

Think about it: How many times have you been out to dinner with friends, and at the end of the meal, when the server asks if anyone would like dessert, your dinner companions obligingly chide, “I really shouldn’t,” while gazing longingly at the next table’s chocolate mousse?

What appears to be your friends’ ability to exercise supreme “willpower” is really just a disaster waiting to happen.

According to psychologist Fritz Heider, “the moment you banish a food, it paradoxically builds up a craving life of its own that gets stronger with each diet, and builds more momentum as the deprivation deepens.” When we finally do give in, we often overeat, and the cycle of an unhealthy relationship with food begins.

Instead of relying on the media to decide when, what, and how much to eat, how about giving your own physical hunger cues the reigns? The key concept of Intuitive Eating, a non-diet method for living healthfully, is listening to one’s own body.

The principles of Intuitive Eating encourage all of us, as human eaters (not dieters), to reject the diet mentality, honor our hunger, make peace with food, and challenge the food police. By learning to get in touch with what we know is most nourishing and satisfying for us, we can trust ourselves to decide what to eat.

For the record, the day after I saw the Special K ad, I didn’t even have French toast for breakfast… But a large bag of extra crunchy salt and vinegar potato chips made the rest of my Netflix marathon perfect.

Carina Chiodo is a native of the East Bay Area, and is currently pursuing her Master’s of Science degree in Nutrition. She hopes to one day specialize in Nutrition Education with a focus on eating disorders, body image, and communicating why food is fabulous, not something to be feared! She loves immersing herself in specialties all over the globe, and she will forever be a foodie.

]]>http://www.about-face.org/why-my-potato-chips-are-healthier-than-the-diet-mentality/feed/2“Era of the Big Booty”? No thanks.http://www.about-face.org/era-of-the-big-booty-no-thanks/
http://www.about-face.org/era-of-the-big-booty-no-thanks/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 16:00:18 +0000http://www.about-face.org/?p=17845I’m not a prude, and I don’t like to judge other women’s personal choices. But I do care an awful lot about how women are portrayed (and portray themselves!) in the media. We’re now averaging 13.6 hours of media consumption per person per day, which means the stories we see played out in the media can’t not impact our self-image. And today’s stories are all about butts.

Celebrities are embracing (and creating) the “Era of the Big Booty.”

I’ve been keeping a list (Yessiree, I have!) since the summer, and I now present to you some of the most recent visible examples of celebrities getting us to focus on their butts.

Add to this, of course, Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” video and the JLo/Iggy Azalea offering simply called “Booty” (in which JLo is revered as the mother of this butt-shaking movement — which is nice, I guess, since credit is due… but it’s also just yucky).

To break it down, pop culture messaging right now is teaching girls that the pathway to recognition, personal empowerment, and success is by flaunting it if you’ve got it.Belfies (butt selfies, of course) are hot, and celebrities are leading the way when it comes to showing off their booties and encouraging everyone else to do the same in the name of female autonomy and choice. And we all seem to be alright with that because the booty is hot! It’s what’s in! It’s exciting! In fact as Vogue magazine proclaimed, we’re “officially in the Era of the Big Booty.”

In my opinion, however, it’s kind of a weird time for everything to be all about that bass. In recent times, the court of public opinion has totally freaked out when girls internalize oversexualized media messages. Take, oh, just about everything Miley Cyrus did last year, for example. Also, girls are constantly told to dress/act sexy, yet they’re penalized when they do so (as demonstrated by recent brouhaha over girls’ dress codes).

It’s tricky.

Consumers are overloaded with images like this.

I don’t mean to wring my hands like an old granny here, chastising womenfolk for being sexy. And my unease concerning the “Era of the Big Booty” isn’t just sour grapes (I’m talking to you, Jonathan Cheban re: your “You Want to Be Her!” comments to Naya Rivera after Kim Kardashian’s #BreakTheInternet photos for PAPER magazine).

But I’m confused. Here we are, a decade after the Girl Power Movement and Third Wave feminism, which in part promoted the idea that girls shouldn’t need to rely on appearance for success or recognition. And yet, current pop culture role models — because that’s what they are, even if they deny it— keep forcing the focus right back on their appearance by making it all about showing off a body part.

Some argue that the fact that female celebrities are choosing to do this — and cashing in on it big time — makes it alright.

Um, I guess. That’s certainly a better scenario than the famous ladies being forced to do this and someone else (a male someone else) laughing all the way to the bank. But ultimately, I wish women in the spotlight would use their power to create new mainstream portrayals of powerful women.

Because wouldn’t that be way more exciting than another belfie?

Audrey D. Brashich is the author of “All Made Up: A Girl’s Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty,” a media literacy and body image guide for teen girls. She writes regularly about trending pop culture issues for national newspapers, websites and magazines including The Washington Post, SmartMom and XoJane.com.

A dilemma: I’m a feminist. Am I allowed to like the “patriarchal nonsense” that is Valentine’s Day? The answer: I sure as hell am, if I want to.

Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays — I show loved ones that I care, and it’s not for a holiday or because society dictates that I ought to give out chocolates or flowers. It’s just a little reminder day to mark off on my calendar with the added bonus of perfume and chocolate sales.

But it’s extremely important to understand that the mainstream celebration of Valentine’s Day is flawed.

It’s dominated by heterosexual capitalism and was created as a day of mass media marketing. It makes people everywhere — regardless of sex, age, or gender — feel obligated to be with someone. And finally, it can make people feel ugly and worthless, like they do not fit society’s beauty standards.

What feminism teaches us is that holidays or people are much more than society makes them out to be. We are more than our genitalia, we are more than a picture in a magazine, and we are definitely more than what the media or some holiday tells us we are. A day isn’t just a day because people tell us what it is. It’s what we make of it.

So go out and bring chocolates home to your loved ones, and buy a case (or three) for yourself. Never stop loving the people you care about, and never stop loving yourself. Never stop loving love.

Kaity Gee is a high school junior at The Harker School in San Jose. She is currently multimedia editor of her school paper, The Winged Post. Kaity has won multiple awards for her journalistic works, including CSPA’s Gold Circle award for Broadcast and Graphic Design; Honorable Mention and 2nd place nationally, respectively. She has also been awarded 2nd place in the National Federation of Press Women’s prestigious Feature Category for her piece on eating disorders, 3rd place in Photo Illustration and Graphics.

On the other hand, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue is really just old-hat sexism. Objectification of women should never be acceptable. How can we expect men, especially young men, to view women as equals when they’re bombarded with images of women as something to be ogled? SI’s Swimsuit issue, along with many other media images of the “ideal female body,” imprints on a young man and gives him a distorted lens through which to view women: as bodies, not as people.

24-year-old model Hannah Davis pulling off her bikini bottoms while standing in front of a fence. On the cover of a sports magazine, natch.

(Hint: It had nothing to do with wanting to look like the model.)

It was because I have no idea how I’m going to explain the image to my two sons (ages six and eight), who love sports and are about to be SI’s target market.

When the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (SISI) cover image hit the internet last Thursday, I happened to be at my kids’ soccer practice. I was watching them run, jump, and practice with gusto (yes, gusto) as they were being coached by a female athlete. A twenty-something who played at a national level during college — and who now teaches kids to go all out for the game.

She was not in a bikini. Nor did she make like she was about to take her skivvies off.

So it hit me there on the sidelines that no matter what I try to teach my own kids about respecting women, and no matter how many inspiring female athletes they meet, my boys — all of our boys — are still going to get the message from powerful mass culture outlets that sports are theirs to dominate. As for girls’ role in athletics, that’s easy: To be hot and looked at.

How is it that we are we still fighting this battle?

We’ve had three waves of feminism; we live in a post-Title IX and post-Girl Power culture where we’re consciously raising girls to participate, excel, and Lean In. And yet this image makes me think of the tweet Rashida Jones (love her!) caught hell for last fall: “This week’s celeb news takeaway: She who comes closest to showing the actual inside of her vagina is most popular. #stopactinglikewhores”

My kids! Playing soccer!

I don’t expect Sports Illustrated to catalyze the revolution when it comes to media portrayals of girls and women — and I’m trying really hard not to get all judgmental about the women who choose to be featured in the SISI. In fact, in an ironic way, their choices actually show how smart they are. They’ve clued into which women in our culture are celebrated and financially rewarded, and they’re gettin’ some rewards for themselves.

But I wish — oh, how I wish — that we could educate ourselves out of being a market for these messages and images. That we could raise a generation of girls who won’t be seduced by the “glamour” and reward of trading on their appearance. And that we could raise an army of boys who don’t expect girls to look/act this way, and who don’t feel entitled to consume such images of women in just about all media that targets them.

With any luck (and a lot of work), it will be my boys who help lead the way.

Audrey D. Brashich is the author of All Made Up: A Girl’s Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty, a media literacy and body image guide for teen girls. She writes regularly about trending pop culture issues for national newspapers, websites and magazines including The Washington Post, SmartMom and XoJane.com. Follow her on Twitter @AudreyBrashich.

“Some readers may wonder how a woman described by Elle magazine as having ‘stunning looks, flirty dresses, tailored pants, colorful heels, and gorgeous hair’ is involved in such a complex legal matter? … It may be astonishing to most people that Amal Alamuddin, now Mrs. Clooney, is much more than a pretty face! In fact, she is perfectly qualified for this critical assignment.” ~Harut Sassounian

Unfortunately, the rampant sexism in the above quote from The Huffington Post’s Harut Sassounian is commonplace in articles surrounding the newly minted Amal Clooney.

Amal Clooney confounds critics with her style and smarts.

Regarded for her human rights work, but always scrutinized for her appearance, Ms. Clooney contradicts what our society traditionally expects of women: that they can never truly be both beautiful and smart. Ms. Clooney is a member of a rare breed that seems to “have it all” — an exclusive club, imagined by Anne-Marie Slaughter, of women who have a perfect work-life balance.

Hollywood has reincarnated this vision of “all” as women who are accomplished and conventionally beautiful. Ms. Clooney’s seeming perfection puts her in an elite group of tabloid-scrutinized women that previously only included the likes of Kate Middleton and Beyoncé – except Ms. Clooney has upped the ante, demonstrating a new level of accomplishment that even Hollywood heavyweights had not achieved.

Thanks to Ms. Clooney’s new standard, even the most intelligent and hardworking of women have to be conventionally beautiful to be perfect. On one hand, she challenges harmful cultural norms that separate beauty and brains. On the other hand, her media image may increase expectations for effortless perfection.

So what does that mean for feminists? What reaction to Ms. Clooney’s image best aids the cause — excitement that there is a woman who proves beauty and brains can coexist, or exhaustion that a woman who does “have it all” actually has emerged in the public eye?

At the risk of offering an easy answer, the most “feminist” reaction may be to stop nitpicking what Ms. Clooney “does” for cultural views of women. While her media presence does raise provocative questions, trying to effectively “pick a side” about what she represents ignores a crucial element of the practical application of feminism: mutual female support.

Are her white gloves really that important?

Women should rally behind Ms. Clooney simply because of who she is. She is our sister, and it is much more feminist to criticize the pundits who disparage her inconsequential white gloves and deliver the idea that she is both smart and beautiful as if it were breaking news than it is to criticize any of her choices.

Although I question the value of celebrities as feminist brand ambassadors, I think self-proclaimed feminist/celebrity Taylor Swift was right when she said, “In order for us to have gender equality, we have to stop making it a girl fight, and we have to stop being so interested in seeing girls trying to tear each other down. It has to be more about cheering each other on, as women.”

Practically, I think this means we must largely applaud Ms. Clooney’s impressive career. Feminists — men and women alike — must make it clear that her work is more important than her appearance, and celebrate the fact that there is a strong female paving the way for others to do the same kind of work (Emma Watson may have an Amal-Clooney-like future). After that, we cannot judge her appearance as either beneficial or detrimental for women. We must applaud her just for doing what she pleases and — from what little we actually know of her life — being herself. That is a feminist reaction that will continue to affirm global sisterhood.

Caitlin Lansing is a 2014 graduate of Princeton University, where an adamant belief that “freak shows turned into beauty pageants” propelled her to write a 90-page history thesis about it. A former dancer and college cheerleader, she is no stranger to body scrutiny, and seeks to challenge the idea that one’s worth is intimately tied to appearance.

]]>http://www.about-face.org/the-feminist-value-of-amal-clooneys-beauty-and-brains/feed/0“Fit is the new thin”: Is Instagram just another channel for eating disorders?http://www.about-face.org/fit-is-the-new-thin-is-instagram-just-another-channel-for-eating-disorders/
http://www.about-face.org/fit-is-the-new-thin-is-instagram-just-another-channel-for-eating-disorders/#commentsThu, 05 Feb 2015 16:00:41 +0000http://www.about-face.org/?p=17919

Positive or negative?

Instagram is one of the most popular forms of social media today, not just because of the awesome pictures, but because of the “community” — it’s sort of like YouTube, except you create your own world online in the form of pictures.

Instagram gets a good rep partially because it seems like a great form of spreading healthy and supportive messages. This is because of the “health and fitness” trend that seems to have taken over Instagram — the community called “FitFam.” While many of these pages seem supportive of healthy behaviors and lifestyles, you have to ask yourself: Does scrolling through thousands of images daily of “fitness enthusiasts,” “healthy eaters,” “raw-vegans,” and fitness models actually inspire health, or does it just perpetuate eating disorders and body image issues?

Hashtags such as #FitnessFriday and #TransformationTuesday appear like clockwork on Instagram feeds, causing speculation over whether Instagram is just another platform social media uses to make people feel bad about themselves, to make people want to change themselves, and to sell a myriad of products in the name of the “healthy lifestyle.”

Instagram images may, in fact, inspire many people to live healthier lives, to exercise, and to eat fruit. However, many of the images have the opposite effect. Even though “fit is the new thin” is a healthier slogan than anything having to do with thigh gaps, it still shows girls unattainable examples of perfect leanness and muscular physiques (as well as plenty of legs sans cellulite).

Does this really inspire people to be more healthy?

I love Instagram. I think it’s great for looking at beautiful fall pictures, adorable puppies, and other mood boosters. It is also a great way to connect with people, see the world, and peer into the lives of others. However, these “health” communities and “fitness inspirations” create an entirely different focus. If we want to stop the harmful messages of media and the creation of more anxious and self-deprecating women, we have to start somewhere where we have control — for example, Instagram.

My advice? Don’t post messages or images that may make others feel bad. Even posts with good intentions can sometimes be hurtful to others. While inspiration is great, a community promoting big butts and tips on how to “achieve” them just adds to the ever-present sphere of messages saying, “You are not good enough, and here’s how to change if you want to be ‘perfect.’”

To change this, we have to step up, stop supporting these media techniques, and really focus on finding the happiness within and around us.

Kinga Vasicsek was born in Hungary and has lived in the Bay Area since age 10. She is a currently in college studying Political Science and Communications. She is an actress and also spends much of her free time writing.

I think I’m in love. I’ve started watching Agent Carter, and so far it’s amazing.

Agent Carter is a short television series about Secret Agent Peggy Carter, filling in the mid-season break in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC. We first met Peggy in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger when she played a supporting role to Captain America himself. Agent Carter puts Peggy unapologetically front and center.

The show is, as Comic Book Resources says, “a superhero show about the postwar erasure of women from American culture” — and it is this erasure, as well as some high-powered bad guys, that Peggy fights in every episode.

Having gone to work in many military and civilian fields during World War II, millions of American women found themselves fired, facing the extremely narrow career options of “wife” and “mother” when male G.I.s returned from the front. When Agent Carter opens, it’s 1946, the year after the war ended. Peggy hasn’t been fired, but she has been significantly demoted from accomplished and respected field agent to under-appreciated secretary. Determined not to let herself get sidelined, Peggy takes a spy gig behind her employer’s back and has to stay one step ahead of her colleagues lest they find her out.

(Spoiler alert for the paragraphs below!)

The show would be impressive enough just for having that as its premise, but it also beautifully portrays its title character as a complete human being. In a single scene, Peggy is shown as being both powerful and vulnerable: She throws the man who killed her roommate out of a window, and then cries about her roommate’s death.

She manages to have fun with her job, even though it’s soul-crushingly frustrating. She makes friends. She fights sexism constantly, whether by standing up for herself and other women, or by twisting sexism to her advantage, such as when she pretends to be a vapid bombshell so that she can infiltrate a nightclub to recover a stolen superbomb. Peggy is smart, confident, resourceful, athletic, and strategic — and she has killer taste in hats.

Seriously, great hat.

But the true excellence of this show was especially obvious when compared to the Dove deodorant commercial that aired during it. As if I needed another reason to love this show, it also put contemporary sexist media in the spotlight.

Dove apparently now makes spray-on deodorant, and the women promoting it in the commercial are giggly buffoons. Their reactions to the deodorant are as follows: “You spray it on?” “How does that work?” “OMG, can I keep it??”

The commercial would have been irritating on its own, but in contrast with Agent Carter, it was completely demeaning and insulting. Agent Carter treats women like people — not just Peggy, but every woman in the show, from her ill-fated roommate to her prickly landlady to the diner waitress she befriends. The Dove commercial treats women like simpletons who have trouble understanding how hygiene products work.

Oh, Dove. I understand that you’re trying to teach us about your new deodorant, but I just watched a gorgeous, intelligent, badass woman outsmart all of her colleagues, use sexism to her advantage to steal a superbomb from bad guys, and then diffuse said superbomb with cleaning products she happened to already have in her kitchen. If she had been portrayed like the women in your commercial, that bomb would have gone off while she wondered whether she was holding it the right way up.

You’re doing great with this show, Marvel. Please, please keep it up. And please let me borrow some of Peggy’s sweet 1940s outfits while you’re at it.

Sasha Albert holds a Master’s degree in Gender and Sexuality from the University of Amsterdam, and works in public health research in the Boston area.

]]>http://www.about-face.org/punching-out-sexism-with-agent-carter/feed/0Great Super Bowl for women and girls, right? Wrong.http://www.about-face.org/great-super-bowl-for-women-and-girls-right-wrong/
http://www.about-face.org/great-super-bowl-for-women-and-girls-right-wrong/#commentsMon, 02 Feb 2015 18:06:34 +0000http://www.about-face.org/?p=17898After so many years of incredibly degrading, sexist, and sexualized ads, the ways women were represented in this year’s Super Bowl commercials, overall, were much less problematic and insulting. It sure seems like advertisers have been listening to what gender equity activists have been saying for many years.

So this is great. Sexism in the Super Bowl is over! We’re there, right?

Well, wrong.

The not-sexist, BMW “Explain the Internet” ad was actually creative.

Viewers certainly did see fewer objectified women, some quite depressing ads (Nationwide Insurance, “I died in an accident.”), awareness-raising PSAs (NFL’s violence against women), and even a healthy dose of girl power (Always, “Like a girl.”), and more exhortations to be an involved father (Dove). In fact, focus group researcher Frank Luntz says that the “dad” commercials do much better among female viewers than male ones, as women are looking for men who are “good dads”. An ad doesn’t need to show women to be targeted to women.

But despite what may be one of the least-sexist ad collections I’ve seen in years of watching the Super Bowl in order to critique the ads, gender stereotypes are very much alive. Let’s not forget that any image of sexualization is bad for girls. According to a report from the American Psychological Association, feeling sexualized and objectified inhibits a girl’s cognitive functioning and self-esteem. Girls still saw the T-Mobile ad featuring Kim Kardashian’s breasts and “outfits”. And there were a few others.

Three ads this year reminded me of the kind of sexism women have put up with for decades: A Carl’s Jr. ad where a seemingly naked woman is partially hidden by melons and other fruit; a Victoria’s Secret ad showing highly sexualized models posing to the song “I’m in the Mood for Love” (that is, “I’m available for you to have sex with.”); and an ad for a video game featuring a woman in some very ineffective armor that displayed her voluptuous cleavage coming out of the top of it. In a strange twist, the tone of these three ads stood out as out-of-touch and outdated.

But they still affect girls in the same ways, and perhaps we all noticed them even more because they were different than the rest.

It didn’t stop with the ads. During the halftime show, which was quite tame compared to previous years, Katy Perry’s dancers strutted around suggestively in a Lolita-style dance to “Teenage Dream”, a pop ditty about how girls turn boys on (“I’ll melt your popsicle.”).

Disappointingly, it says a lot about how bought into sexism we are that the talk around the Internet and Twitter during and after the Super Bowl is that women fared “pretty well”. There were only 7 to 10 sexualized women! And that “Like a Girl” ad was so powerful! We should celebrate!

It’s important to keep our eyes on the truth: The Super Bowl itself still oozes gender stereotype as an American tradition. Seemingly inherent in the Super Bowl is the hypermasculinity of the violent game, the tiny female cheerleaders bouncing around (which television viewers rarely see because they dance during commercial breaks), the extremely high level of competition. This spectacle is rooted in subtle and blatant gender stereotype.

So regardless of how little overtly sexist advertising there is, it’s still there, and it’s unacceptable. There’s something about the juxtaposition of hypermasculinity and the cleavage of the woman in the Victoria’s Secret ad that can be extremely unsettling for a woman who needs to wake up Monday morning, go to work, and wonder how her male colleagues see her as they banter about the game at the water cooler. Or a girl who needs to go to school and wonder how her male classmates see her.

It’s not time to be resigned and think that everything’s getting better, and we’ve made it to the post-feminist finish line. We haven’t. So this year, amplify your voice by praising all the “good” ads via tweeting companies, writing their CEOs, and contacting NBC, the network that broadcasts the event. But let’s also be sure to keep the drumbeat of complaint going companies that objectify women until they realize they’ll make even more money if they quit insulting half the population.

Jennifer Berger, Executive Director of About-Face, is an expert in how media shapes our sense of self.